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Jun. 14th, 2009 12:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phthalombrageI spent a week in Boston at my grandma's.
I have to admit, I don't really think a lot about my grandma. For as long as I've existed, she's always lived in Boston, and I've mostly lived in Sarasota or Pittsburgh, both an appreciable distance from Boston. She didn't visit us regularly, and only after my grandpa died did we go up to Boston more frequently, which now amounts to about once a year. Basically, most of my contact with her was limited to the dreaded hours-long weekly phone call featuring such thrilling topics as who has died recently and what she ate at the senior center this week, and various mailpieces (she will never own a computer). She is probably awake now, actually, but I don't usually wonder what she is doing because I have many other things and people to think about.
She doesn't. My grandpa died over ten years ago, and I've come to doubt how much she actually loved him after listening to her talk (for hours!) about how she had always just liked to have a good time dancing the jitterbug or riding horses, how she quit her job as a secretary for General Alloys after she got married, his illnesses, and what a pain it was to take care of him, juxtaposed with warm and fond memories of her mother, aunt and uncle, and brothers. Even though a lot of her family lives nearby, nobody visits her, invites her over, or wants to have us over when my mom and brother and I come up... and I sort of understand. Some of them are a little crazy, and she's very critical and depressing to be around. I also recall that last summer, she struck up a relentless political debate with a man with two young children whose wife had recently succumbed to cancer. She's a Republican. In Boston. Disagreements will happen, clearly, but she's so stubborn and opinionated that it's better to just not discuss politics, even if you, too, are a Catholic Polish Republican. She has a few friends, but they are dying off, her only daughter lives far away, and some of her neighbors upset her by being lesbians or having a large dog that she once caught peeing on her weedy lawn... She's lonely. So she mentions me in her prayers each night, and nary a (major) holiday goes by without a card making its way from her to me.
This in mind, even if she does go on for hours with the same stories, even if she doesn't cook or drive, which is sort of annoying if you are a guest, even if she constantly nags my brother and me about our usage of the terrible computahs, even if she always tries to make sure I am still Catholic... I'm glad I got to be there with her for a week. She would have preferred a month, but my mom said she couldn't stand it, and sometimes my mom is more annoying than her mother, so nobody relevant could really stand it. I had to do dishes all the time and chop onions a lot and vacuum the stairs twice, then clean out the vacuum, and sit around talking when I was really bored, and I felt awfully guilty when I had to go to the attic to leech internet reliably and my grandma was calling up asking where I was. We escaped to my godmother's house far less often than usual, and my brother and I only spent a few hours in Boston, finally walking the Freedom Trail.
I realized I really don't have all that much family that still talks to me or is willing to let us visit. I'm sort of inept at forging lasting friendships. I may as well visit my grandma and humor her by reading the clippings and articles she hands me, washing her dishes so those arthritic hands can rest, watching the bad TV that gets her through days and years alone.
I have also learned that having friends is really useful when you need a place to live, because the rest of the world doesn't give two shits if you find a place to stay or not, unless they are particularly desperate (and you gotta be really desperate if you're helping me out, apparently) to find someone to take over their own lease. I don't even know if I can call what happened "lucky" because I spent so long unsuccessfully seeking out accommodations beforehand that when luck finally struck, I was a little bitter about how several other people had treated me, and I really had no other options, not that I am all that unhappy about the prospects. Seriously, though, goddamn. What am I going to do for senior year when everyone else I know already has places to live by the time I get back stateside?
I should really not think about things that haven't happened yet, though. Or sometimes, things that already did.
I have to admit, I don't really think a lot about my grandma. For as long as I've existed, she's always lived in Boston, and I've mostly lived in Sarasota or Pittsburgh, both an appreciable distance from Boston. She didn't visit us regularly, and only after my grandpa died did we go up to Boston more frequently, which now amounts to about once a year. Basically, most of my contact with her was limited to the dreaded hours-long weekly phone call featuring such thrilling topics as who has died recently and what she ate at the senior center this week, and various mailpieces (she will never own a computer). She is probably awake now, actually, but I don't usually wonder what she is doing because I have many other things and people to think about.
She doesn't. My grandpa died over ten years ago, and I've come to doubt how much she actually loved him after listening to her talk (for hours!) about how she had always just liked to have a good time dancing the jitterbug or riding horses, how she quit her job as a secretary for General Alloys after she got married, his illnesses, and what a pain it was to take care of him, juxtaposed with warm and fond memories of her mother, aunt and uncle, and brothers. Even though a lot of her family lives nearby, nobody visits her, invites her over, or wants to have us over when my mom and brother and I come up... and I sort of understand. Some of them are a little crazy, and she's very critical and depressing to be around. I also recall that last summer, she struck up a relentless political debate with a man with two young children whose wife had recently succumbed to cancer. She's a Republican. In Boston. Disagreements will happen, clearly, but she's so stubborn and opinionated that it's better to just not discuss politics, even if you, too, are a Catholic Polish Republican. She has a few friends, but they are dying off, her only daughter lives far away, and some of her neighbors upset her by being lesbians or having a large dog that she once caught peeing on her weedy lawn... She's lonely. So she mentions me in her prayers each night, and nary a (major) holiday goes by without a card making its way from her to me.
This in mind, even if she does go on for hours with the same stories, even if she doesn't cook or drive, which is sort of annoying if you are a guest, even if she constantly nags my brother and me about our usage of the terrible computahs, even if she always tries to make sure I am still Catholic... I'm glad I got to be there with her for a week. She would have preferred a month, but my mom said she couldn't stand it, and sometimes my mom is more annoying than her mother, so nobody relevant could really stand it. I had to do dishes all the time and chop onions a lot and vacuum the stairs twice, then clean out the vacuum, and sit around talking when I was really bored, and I felt awfully guilty when I had to go to the attic to leech internet reliably and my grandma was calling up asking where I was. We escaped to my godmother's house far less often than usual, and my brother and I only spent a few hours in Boston, finally walking the Freedom Trail.
I realized I really don't have all that much family that still talks to me or is willing to let us visit. I'm sort of inept at forging lasting friendships. I may as well visit my grandma and humor her by reading the clippings and articles she hands me, washing her dishes so those arthritic hands can rest, watching the bad TV that gets her through days and years alone.
I have also learned that having friends is really useful when you need a place to live, because the rest of the world doesn't give two shits if you find a place to stay or not, unless they are particularly desperate (and you gotta be really desperate if you're helping me out, apparently) to find someone to take over their own lease. I don't even know if I can call what happened "lucky" because I spent so long unsuccessfully seeking out accommodations beforehand that when luck finally struck, I was a little bitter about how several other people had treated me, and I really had no other options, not that I am all that unhappy about the prospects. Seriously, though, goddamn. What am I going to do for senior year when everyone else I know already has places to live by the time I get back stateside?
I should really not think about things that haven't happened yet, though. Or sometimes, things that already did.
